


then you say, go slow (I fall behind)

by TolkienGirl



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Second Person, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 03:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Love is not a word you use.





	then you say, go slow (I fall behind)

_Love_ is not a word you use.

Lucas has— _hinted_ —it, from time to time. Your mom says it like an afterthought, like the lipstick clinging to the corners of her mouth and the hollows under her eyes that look too much the same as bruises. Your teen magazines proclaim it in a hundred ways. The movies call it out in technicolor banners.

Billy dies right in front of you, and you always swore you hated him, but you never really did.

Your life, as it happens, is a series of pain-bright memories. First came California freedom; later, California fear. Backseat sobbing, hands over your mouth, neck craned around so you could watch home drift out of view. 

Hawkins. Hell. _Lucas_. L—

 _Love_. There’s that word again.

Friendship. Terror. School and panic and sizzling summer heat, candy and library books, scraped knees, _I-hate-you-Billy-I-hate-you-so-much_ —

What is the seven-foot wave, if it’s not the thing that kills you?

You thought he’d kill Lucas and Steve and you, though the thought of Billy killing _you_ had never made you fight the same way you did to protect _them_. _You_ are going to survive and grow up and you will never speak to Neil again, will never see Billy again, will never—

You will never see Billy again.

He was your brother when the monster took him. You hadn’t thought of him like that before.

Your home is full of strangers now, one less than there was. You can’t think of a single day that Billy was… _kind_ , is the thing. But you understand what it is to not know how. To not know the words, the looks.

(You are sobbing in a mirror with only you in it, you are sprawled on a floor of uncountable blood.)

(You are going to make it.)


End file.
